Entry: Rebecca Ashley Asare, Yale School of Forestry PhD candidate
World Cocoa Foundation grant recipient

At the end of March, I returned from Mensonso (pictured below), a cocoa farming village in Ghana’s Adansi South District, which is part of Ashanti Region. Mensonso is one of the villages where I am conducting my PhD research in Social Ecology from Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. The goal of this research is to understand how cocoa farmers are managing shade trees in their young cocoa farms, and to identify those factors that are influencing their management.

If you ever have the chance to visit Ghana, you will quickly observe that what appears to be a forest on the horizon is in fact a vast area of cocoa farms with a rich canopy of shade trees, many of which have important economic value. What is fascinating to me about cocoa farming is the key role that farmers play in influencing the biological diversity of the landscape. Essentially, farmers select those forest trees that they want in their farms, and remove trees that they do not like or need. An older cocoa farm with mature shade trees presents a picture of the forest landscape from ten, twenty or even thirty years past, as these trees were “selected” when the farm was originally established. In studying young farms, I am trying to understand how current conditions will affect on-farm diversity in the future. One potential factor is on-farm logging. In Ghana this is an important issue because a large proportion of the country’s timber derives from cocoa farms. While timber is a renewable resource, in many ways the future of this resource depends on the decisions that farmers are making today.

Photo: Cocoa farmers from Mensonso

In Mensonso, timber companies have been logging trees from cocoa farms for over a decade. Sometimes they do so with the farmer’s permission; sometimes they take the tree without the farmer’s knowledge. In both cases, the felling of the tree causes extensive damage to the farm. Though I am yet to complete the research, it does appear that farmer’s opinions about logging are quite mixed. Some farmers are angry about the damage to their cocoa trees and lack of compensation, but feel powerless because under national law they cannot own the trees that regenerate naturally on their farms. Other farmers see it as a contribution to the nation, and gladly accept any small price that they may receive for their damaged cocoa. But how do these opinions translate into action? That is one of the questions that I hope to answer. Are farmers purposefully eliminating the valuable timber species in order to avoid damage, or will they maintain a diversified shade canopy regardless? One thing is clear- these trees are highly valuable for their local uses. While a Milicia species, locally known as Odum or Iroko, is valuable on national and international markets, it is also very important to the individual farmer who may retain this tree for his or her own uses, like for roofing, doors, furniture, or other household items. Despite the fact that it is technically illegal for farmers to cut and use these trees for timber, many of the farmers that I have interviewed maintain timber trees (if they are growing in their farm) as a future personal investment.

Photo: Rebecca Ashley Asare in the field.

Next week I will head to the field again, this time to the village of Kobro, in Amansie Central District, also in Ashanti Region. In this cocoa farming area there are no logging companies operating and so I want to see whether this lack of logging makes any difference in terms of the diversity and density of tree species that farmers are choosing for their young farms.